The westward journey away from war and toward the 2022 World Cup began early on a Saturday morning in Kyiv. It had been two months since the bombs started falling and the sirens started wailing; since windows shattered and some Ukrainian soccer players sheltered on garage floors. They feared the Russian missiles that seemed to strike incessantly. They huddled in basements, under blankets. They pleaded for peace, then fled for safety, their minds as far as could be from the sport that once paced their lives.
But on April 30, a bus departed Ukrainian soccer headquarters around 8 a.